Desertification of the Self and Shorter-Term Memory: A Reading
by THIRDLOOKintern
Summary: In this lecture-performance, fragments of human use history are examined and a new form of memory is defined. Location: Floor Three, Susan Hell Family Theater, Whitney Museum of American Art


Hito Steyerl walks in wearing pink running shoes, pink floral print tights, a pink hooded sweatshirt, and a black parka. Without removing the parka she sits down with her back to the floor-to-ceiling windows and begins speaking.

"Landfill is hidden in landfill. As soon as an additional layer is added, the previous visible surface is buried and forgotten. Surface area is our perceived measure of a landfill, not depth or volume since that would require acknowledgement of an erased history–that of the buried past.

"The daily repetition and ritual of discarding trash makes it invisible. Some days I create more pieces of physical trash than I receive emails. For example, yesterday I threw away an empty cereal box including the plastic cereal bag, received a package in the mail and immediately discarded the box, used two disposable napkins at a restaurant, and more. In comparison to my generation of digital trash that same day I received 4 emails and sent 2 emails.

"On a recent trip to Seoul I took the train from Incheon airport to Seoul station. While you mainly know me as a successful artist with more than 180,000 Google search results for my name, my day job is that of environmental engineer where I quantitatively evaluate energy efficiency of municipal infrastructure. For 8 seconds of the 48 minute train ride, from my window on the left side of the train, I could see a waste processing facility and, within its walls, see garbage being transported, compacted and processed. Piles of grey and gleaming metal, balanced between twisted round shapes and residual 90 degree angles were being picked up and moved to processing machines by front-end loaders. No humans were visible.

"I turned around in my seat to get a better look but it was too late and we were now speeding past a water processing plant then warehouses and then a video clip came on the train's monitor about luxury car collectors in Seoul."

It rained today. The moss covered rocks in Central Park are wet.

"At what point does an object become trash? The transformation of childhood possessions into trash is a slow and familiar one. The transformation of daily objects into trash often goes unnoticed. When I see a package of plastic cups being purchased by the person in line in front of me at a grocery store, they are paying $7.99 for 100 pieces of trash. When I look at my closet, or at my bookshelf, I know these are objects I love and wear and reference and share with friends. I love these objects. But years from now when my taste changes, or when I move apartments next and don't want to carry them with me, I will give away or throw away these same items.

"There is a mismatch between the positive impact of using and loving these objects, and the impact of throwing them away. The utility I gain in the short-term is shared locally between myself and my friends. The impact of debris transport, processing, storage, and biodegradation is shared globally between society, bacteria, and physical deterioration processes.

"As natural resource deposits are depleted at rates far outpacing regeneration, we are approaching an eventuality where all natural mines and oil wells are barren. At that point, landfills will become the densest accumulation of resources and become the new mines. The most accessible sources of metals and minerals won't be raw, buried ore under strip-mined mountains. A transformation takes place, where what was once considered unwanted refuse becomes precious ore for resource extraction.

"When discarded, processed, crushed and buried, nothing is completely destroyed. Each object fragmentizes into waste and landfill polluting the world. The scattered shards stand as markers and monuments to their own existence. These shards are sad, to no longer have a recognized function, buried in soil or drifting across city streets."

Forty five crabs in an aquarium on Mott Street breathe aerated water through their gills.

"Until the molecules themselves are broken down, the plastic or metal trash we dispose is not destroyed. Bacteria take hundreds of years to molecularly process plastic. In the meantime, the scattered landscape across which shards and fragments and tiny pieces of plastic drift is a mine and data set containing information.

"The information of the present can be unpacked to reveal the exact sequence of the past. And the past can be interpolated to reveal the exact steps of the future. To view the landscape and terrain we inhabit is to surveil our entire use history.

"Materials reflect the patterns of light they have absorbed, through small forms of decay and breakdown such as fading and material wear. In this sense, every object is a camera and through advanced analysis we can unpack and disaggregate everything refuse has seen.

"The untrained eye can easily recognize long term exposure to sunlight, and read the history of an object left in the sun at a certain angle for years. By carefully unpacking every light pattern an item has absorbed in its lifetime, we can read and replay everything the item witnessed.

"Who has the right to this surveillance? Whose privacy is violated most? Whose permission is needed to disaggregate light waves absorbed by an anonymous piece of debris? Or to unpack private moments in your home witnessed by what you intentionally or casually discarded into the public sphere? The privacy of the object itself is foremost violated. The right to a secret past–not an erased history, but a private history. Any entity–whether human, trash or anything in between–deserves a private life, and deserves an unsurveilled afterlife."

While Steyerl speaks people across the curved surface of the earth live out their normal lives of frustration and distraction and introspection, perhaps.

"As only the surface of our global landfill is visible, the deeper infrastructural systems are invisible after being pushed down to the weakest, most easily exploited populations. Western nations force hazardous jobs on the developing world's women and children, to process and create new materials from the waste of others.

"The Zabaleen people live in the Mokattam Hills of Cairo. They collect, transport, sort, reuse, sell and dispose of all trash in the surrounding area. They live in a maze of 4 story towers made of concrete frames with brick infill. The streets are filled with debris, unsorted, partially sorted, or organized into piles by material and color. Organic refuse is fed to pigs. The Zabaleen charge no fees, and survive by recycling and salvaging the waste they collect.

"In 2003 the Egyptian government signed contracts with international refuse processing corporations, displacing the Zabaleen and their way of life. In 2009 the government killed all pigs in the Cairo region to prevent the spread of the H1N1 flu, destroying a crucial asset and piece of infrastructure for the Zabaleen. Infant mortality in the Mokattam Hills is 117 per 1,000 compared to the 45.6 per 1,000 average in all of Cairo. Finland and Japan have infant mortality rates of 2.3 per 1,000.

"Guiyu in Guandong Province, China is a region containing 4 villages and is the global center of electronic waste recycling. The word 'recycling' in this context means grinding computers, monitors and cell phones into pellets which children sort by material and color so they can be processed into new raw materials. Or placing circuit boards over charcoal braziers to melt and harvest rare metals. Mercury drains into the hard packed earth adjacent to a rice paddy. Ground water is undrinkable."

One hundred million miles away, the vacuum of outer space pulses and hums with electromagnetic waves.

"Ritual and repetition are desensitizing. As we sleep, wake and consume we are so complicit in systems of waste that we never notice the exploitation and inequity the systems are built on. Any flicker of awareness immediately disappears before it can become a complete thought.

"Desertification of the self is when everything vanishes into the hyper short-term. Short-term memories are registered and retained for 20 to 30 seconds. Through repetition to the edge of human capacity, contemporary society has invented a new form of short-term memory; shorter-term memory is a memory that is forgotten instantly. Shorter-term memories are registered by a subconscious automated process buried beneath the surface. We are never mentally aware of them and never feel an obligation to act.

"Eventually everything is erased, through the daily repetition of waking and sleeping."


End file.
